More Than Glass (Short Story)
by Anie Bookes
Summary: Valkyrie Cain touched the cool surface and inhaled. The sensation always lingered for longer but there was something different about these memories this time. There were blanks. What did she do?
1. Chapter 1

_Synopsis:_

 _The Reflection examines its reflection._

 **Chapter 1: Cold**

A winter's moon takes position on the far side of her wall and illuminates the shadowed room. In it, a girl stands before a plain sheet of glass. She stares intently. She asks it to show her something else. She wills it to show her something else.

It doesn't change.

Resigned, the girl shuts her eyes and enters the glass, returning to her liquid state of unretrieved memories.

...

Before she enters, the room is already cold.

A cold case, a cold room. Valkyrie couldn't think of anything more repulsive.

In her tired state, her mind abandoned protocol and she let herself slip into crinkled sheets and a pillow-less bed. She slept cold.

...

The Hidden Life in her room stayed dormant and unbothered by its owner's lack of care. Instead, it stayed put, and watched as its owner fell into an undisturbed sleep, not minding the crinkled sheets she was laying upon.


	2. Chapter 2

_Synopsis:_

 _Valkyrie finds something unusual_

 **Chapter 2: Unease**

After the cold came the unease, a trickling tickling scraping unease.

Glancing around her room, a pile of dull sequins melted in a puddle on her floor. She picks it up.

A strappy dress. A strappy sequin dress. Valkyrie Cain would never wear anything like this- a dress.

But what was it doing in her room? In her size? She looked at the spot again. By her open window, a damp shirt. Too unfamiliar, too big to be hers.

A mix of fatigue and the disappointment of an their unsolved case took hold of Valkyrie and she chucked the dress back into its pool of dull sequins, drowning the damp shirt. She didn't care right now. All she wanted, all she desired, was sleep.

Decidedly tired, falling face first, the detective landed back into a blank slumber.


	3. Chapter 3

_Synopsis:_

 _Something feels off to Valkyrie._

 **Chapter 3: Off**

She awakes to the satisfying cracking of her own stiff bones as she unsuccessfully attempts to untangle her body from a web of white sheets.

 _There's something off._

She rubs her eyes slowly before dragging herself across her room and to her bathroom. She fills a tub with water and admires its languid incline.

 _There's something off._

Shaking her head, Valkyrie slowly drops into the awaiting tub. The water is not too cold or too hot, but a dull medium that does nothing to settle her mind or body. She cant switch off her racing brain, but her body doesn't seem to want to cooperate either, instead operating in a pace akin to a snail-and-tortoise crossbreed. _Something is wrong._

In two hours rather than thirty minutes, she will eventually drag herself out of the tub, the water long gone stale and stationary.

...

Skulduggery cant help but feel off. In 24 hours his partner had not called nor texted him that she had arrived home safely.

In the past day, Valkyrie Cain had gone silent and he thought he would never see the day.


	4. Chapter 4

_Synopsis:_

 _Valkyrie sees everything, well... nearly everything_

 **Chapter 4: Seeing**

Soft, bristled fabric rubs against her bruised skin. Blue and black and purple and green rages a bloody war on her body. Scars like trenches and marks like mines, each tells a memory she's long stopped caring for.

Her body now dry, she uses the damp towel to pin up her wet hair. She sighs at the long process but does what's necessary to not risk setting her hair alight.

Then, she stops.

An inconspicuous sheet of glass covers a thin strip in her room. To many it is but a means to admire oneself. To Valkyrie, it is but a portal to a dimension of horrors only she is privy to.

The mirror before her shows the magnitude of her war.

She can still pinpoint which manmade dip and crevice of her thin skin had outlived each blow and punch and strike. Through the mirror, she revives each sour memory from its dormant state and traces it with her dull eyes.

As she stands before it, she is bare and vulnerable to the harsh criticism the glass and her own mind provides her.

Then, a moment of fleeting blackness unfolds before her succeeded by sudden streaks of scented tropics that invade her nose and tongue. She blinks as rays of strobic light sting her eyes and a harsh thumping penetrates the back of her head and ricochets against the inside of her skull. A fractured minute of blinding darkness introduces itself to the mix of fleeting senses and she is left in complete silence before she finally regains control and she once again is faced with her herself.

"Hello Valkyrie."


End file.
